


(And I heard you say) the past was much more fun

by minkhollow



Category: Bernard and the Genie (1991), Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crossover, Female-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Gen, two implied ships, vaguely blasphemous headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 23:23:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21169580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkhollow/pseuds/minkhollow
Summary: Sometimes, familiar faces crop up where you least expect them.  Sometimes, the comfort of relative strangers can see you through a big mistake.





	(And I heard you say) the past was much more fun

**Author's Note:**

> Back on my obscure-crossover bullshit, not that I ever really left it. If you know one of these fandoms (and if you're here it's probably Good Omens, I'm not pretending otherwise), you will very much enjoy the other one; I cannot recommend either of these canons enough.

Keeping Josephus focused in Piccadilly Circus is an impossible task, but at least Bernard knew it would be before they left his flat. If he were the one who’d lost two thousand years to being cooped up in a lamp, he’s pretty sure he’d be just as excited by every new thing - and everything _is_ new. The location, the clothes, the languages, the entertainment, the food, all of it.

Now that the guy’s not trying to kill him, Bernard feels for him, a bit.

Josephus declares the heart of London incredibly clean and impossibly loud, but he seems to adjust quickly enough. He all but inhales one of every type of food they pass by, and would probably spend hours standing in the street watching the adverts circle through the outdoor TV screens if Bernard didn’t keep pulling him out of the flow of traffic. It could be worse, but it’s like herding an overgrown five-year-old.

As usual, everyone else who’s out and about is lost in their own little world. Conversations pass them by in all sorts of languages. Bernard can follow English, of course, and Scots Gaelic having grown up hearing a lot of it, and sort of French and Italian thanks to working in the art world; he knows German when he hears it, and can’t distinguish the various languages Indian and Pakistani immigrants have brought with them from each other. Anything else is completely lost on him.

A woman shouts something in a language he can’t place at all - and Josephus’ head snaps up, looking toward the shouter with a mix of recognition and suspicion and, weirdly, hope. Then he changes direction entirely, away from the movie theater Bernard had been steering them to and toward the shouter.

“What are you - you can’t chase down every person who yells something out here!” he says, as he tries to catch up.

“That was bloomin’ _Aramaic_, Bernie. No one’s using it. Nobody at all, and it’s one of my not-wished-on-me languages. Besides, she said something to me specifically.”

“Did she really. I don’t see how, since I’m the only one who knows you’re here.” But curiosity gets the better of Bernard, so he adds, “What did she say, anyway?”

“Roughly translated… ‘Josephus, you complete wanker, you still owe me supper.’”

Bernard has to admit, it’s exactly the kind of thing he can see someone yelling at his new friend. He’s still not sure it isn’t some kind of trick - Josephus yanking his chain about the language, or something - but he definitely doesn’t have the physical strength to so much as slow him down, and that’s not something he’s about to wish for. That would just be bloody weird.

The trail ends in front of a frankly gorgeous vintage black Bentley, so well-kept it looks like it just rolled off the assembly line. There is indeed a woman leaning on it, red curls teased up into a voluminous cloud. She’s wearing a black dress with shoulder pads you could break someone’s nose on, sunglasses despite the late hour, and the exact same expression as Josephus. Bernard watches, beyond confused, as their mutual apprehension gives way to twinned delight.

“Kralia, how in _hell_\--” Josephus gets no further before the woman darts forward and hugs him, not unlike a snake striking at its prey.

“You know how,” she says. “And it’s Crowley, now; I settled on it around the time you up and disappeared. What in blazes was up with _that_, anyway?”

“Ah… teeny tiny mishap with a wizard’s daughter and some knife throwing. Sort of thing that could have happened to anyone, really. He took exception to my bad aim, though, and here I am.”

“Huh. I’ll have to find out who this wizard sold his soul to for that kind of power and thank them for striking the deal.” Crowley pulls back from the hug and turns her attention to Bernard. “Who’s your friend, then?”

If she moves like a snake, Bernard feels like nothing so much as a mouse under her scrutiny; it’s very nearly as excruciating as meetings at work (well, his former workplace) were. “Bernard,” he manages on his second attempt, mostly thankful he hasn’t actually been reduced to squeaking. “Bernard Bottle. Pleasure.”

“He lets me out of the lamp, dumps an _entire language_ in my head, and then wishes I’d stop trying to kill him. Can you believe he’d ruin my fun like that?” For all he’s complaining, Josephus doesn’t sound or look terribly put out at all.

Crowley grins. “You wouldn’t have known what to do with yourself if you’d succeeded before he got that far, and you blessed well know it. Besides, then who’d be guiding you around the 20th century? I wouldn’t have known to look for you.”

“Suppose you wouldn’t have, no.” For a moment, Josephus’ cheer flags, and he looks every bit as lost as he did before Bernard introduced him to Big Macs - but then, he brightens again. “Anyway, we were apparently about to go to the theater, but as big as that building is I’m not sure how anyone can hear the performers. See you around?”

“Oh, undoubtedly. And don’t think I’ve forgotten about that lunch, either. Before you go, though - you might want to pop La Gioconda back home to Paris, before someone cottons on, if that was you? Believe me, I understand wanting her company in your living room, but who knows if you could wish your way out of that one.”

Crowley nods toward a newsstand on the corner, and Bernard blanches. “Oh, bugger me, I hadn’t even thought about - Josephus? I wish she was back in the Louvre where she belongs.”

“Done, my friend. Now come on, I want to see what this theater thing is all about these days.”

As they head back toward the movie theater, Bernard finally asks the question that’s been on his mind since Josephus diverted their attention. “_You_ might know what she’s doing here, but I’m still completely lost. How on Earth is someone you know…” Still alive? In London? Both of those things, really.

Josephus shrugs. “She always did say she wasn’t entirely human. I wasn’t sure whether she was having us all on, but apparently not.”

Bernard sighs, and decides to drop the topic as he gets them in line for tickets. He can hardly handle the fact that there’s an actual genie crashing in his flat and improving his life in all sorts of ways he either didn’t think were possible anymore or hadn’t known he needed. He’s not sure he’s ready for that level of weird cropping up elsewhere in his life.

***

Just when Bernard thought he was finally getting the hang of this, Josephus knocks him for another loop by dropping the bombshell that he _knows Jesus Christ_. ‘Helped out with the wine at his brother’s wedding,’ indeed. How is a man supposed to cope with this kind of information?

“Really, I don’t know why this is still so surprising to you,” Josephus says, after casually mentioning a couple more miracles he was a personal witness to. “I mean, I’ve already introduced you to his wife’s girlfriend.”

Bernard can actually feel his brain screeching to a halt. “You. I. Beg pardon?”

Josephus just laughs, the complete bastard. Fortunately, he does circle back round to explain.

“The thing is, Yeshua loves _absolutely everyone_,” he says. “Even the pretentious idiots at the temple, for all he doesn’t like them. But he’s no fun at all at wild parties, and as for Maryam, I’ve never seen her look twice at a man. They got married for the look of the thing - it keeps her safe, and neither of them have to worry about the other wanting a baby all of a sudden. He’d never tell her not to have her fun - that ‘adultery in your heart’ thing was more about keeping men in line when they’re a woman’s sole financial support.”

“Ah.” That does make an alarming amount of sense, considering how easy it used to be to completely ruin a woman’s life just by divorcing her. “And where does Crowley come into this?”

“She kept saying it looked good on reports, but your guess about what that means is as good as mine. Maryam thinks she’s got it bad for someone else, but either didn’t know it or was in some serious denial at the time. She took them both on some big vacation once - kept calling it ‘around the world in forty days.’”

With that nugget of information in hand, Bernard thinks he could hazard a guess at what the bit about reports means. He wants to say it’s not possible, and it sure still _feels_ impossible, but after the last couple of days, can he really rule anything out? More to the point, could Josephus stop just _saying_ these things like they’re no big deal?

“Anyway, why make the big fuss about his birthday _now_?” Josephus plows on, while Bernard’s still trying to come to grips with all these revelations. “They’re at least three months off, he was born in the spring.”

Bernard shrugs. “Couldn’t tell you. People just… started celebrating it in early winter and that was that, I suppose. Besides, over time it’s sort of drifted away from being about his birthday.”

“Right, Mr. Beardy and all that. He’d like the part about helping people, if that was actually what anyone did.”

The thought hangs in the air between them, and by the time they look up from their drinks, they’re both grinning. Wonderful, the manic energy is catching. But Bernard can’t really bring himself to complain; as much as he’s been reeling since he tried to clean a bit of grime off a dingy lamp, he hasn’t felt this good about his life in years.

***

_“Oh, this is getting far too much, I wish you would just go--”_

Bernard’s greatest blunder keeps replaying in his head as he walks, with no real destination in mind, through the snow (that he wished for), with pockets full of money (that he wished for), secure in the knowledge that karma has visited his ex and his former boss (as he wished for)... bereft of the company of the best friend he’s had in years.

Who he accidentally wished away. Good job him, forgetting the power those two bloody simple words held at the last minute.

He should go home, but even with some life wished back into it after his ex reclaimed her share of the decor (most of it), it would be unbearably empty without Josephus there. It’s stupid. They’d agreed he should return to what he’d been forced to leave behind.

(_“Oh, this is getting far too much, I wish you would just go--”_)

But not like this. Not by _mistake_. That kind of cock-up takes talent.

It feels like he blinks and finds himself in Soho, for all the thought Bernard put into getting there. That’s fine, he supposes, or at least as fine as anywhere else would be right now. Nothing’s going to be truly fine for a while, and for all he appreciates the gesture of Josephus trying to set up a date for him with the girl from the Santa grotto, he’d be terrible company right now. He can follow up on that later, maybe. It’ll be open a couple more days.

What properly shakes Bernard out of this awful autopilot (_“Oh, this is getting far too much, I wish you would just go--”_) is nearly walking into a very familiar car parked outside a shop. The parking job is almost certainly illegal, and there’s no snow whatsoever on the Bentley - but really, all things considered, he’d be a little surprised if it dared to stick.

And it _must_ be the same car. There aren’t many around these days, certainly not in this good of shape. He could about bear talking to Crowley about this, assuming he can find her.

The shop she’d parked in front of, practically daring the authorities to boot the car for it, isn’t one he’d have thought she’d be interested in - a dingy old place claiming to be a bookshop, with a hand-lettered sign that doesn’t look like it’s been touched up since the building was erected. The notice on the door regarding hours of operation manages to pull a brief smile out of Bernard; if he didn’t know better, he’d say the owner couldn’t bring themselves to consider actually _selling_ anything, and yet, surely some commerce must be conducted here or it wouldn’t still be open, right?

The door swings open at the slightest touch to the handle. Bernard’s not sure if it’s meant to be open, but he’s curious now, and in desperate need of something to think about other than his own troubles besides, so he steps in, wiping his feet on the mat just inside. The shop’s practically heaped with books, most of which look far too old and valuable for the average customer to stand a chance at buying, and there’s no one at the front counter - but there _is_ the sound of conversation coming from the back. It’s Crowley, bitterly complaining about something, and an unfamiliar man’s voice answering in what sounds like fond amusement even from here.

With the kind of foolhardiness that nearly saw him beheaded a week ago (_“Oh, this is getting far too much, I wish you would just go--”_), Bernard follows the sound.

“This is a cool enough climate for proper winter weather to make the occasional appearance, my dear,” says the unfamiliar voice, presumably the shop’s owner. He sounds like the kind of person Bernard would expect to find here, anyway, so far as one can tell anything from a voice alone.

“Don’t care. Snow’s bloody _ssstupid_, angel.” Crowley, he’s close enough to see now, is all but burrowed under a tartan blanket on an ancient-looking couch, managing to look quite put out despite her apparently ever-present sunglasses. “I really, really don’t understand why humans love cold weather so much.”

Bernard’s trying to be quiet, he really is, he’s well aware he probably shouldn’t have come in, but he can’t help a strangled noise when Crowley says that, somewhere between guilt and hysterical laughter and proper sobbing. Josephus had made a similar complaint this morning, before (_“Oh, this is getting far too much, I wish you would just go--”_) he left. Crowley’s head snaps directly toward the noise before he can think about moving, and she treats him to another predatory smile.

“Well, if it isn’t Art Friend. Where’s our mutual troublemaker, then? If he’s out among the books unattended, it’s on your head, not mine.”

...He can’t bear talking about this after all, nor watching Crowley’s face as she takes in the bad news. Bernard shakes his head, screwing his eyes shut.

“I thought you said you locked the door, Crowley, how did - oh, dear. Perhaps you needed to come in after all. How long have you been out in this weather, young man?”

Bernard cracks an eye open and is presented with a dumpy middle-aged man in an old-fashioned suit, pretty well radiating concern in his direction. (The man’s bow tie is the same tartan as the blanket Crowley’s wrapped up in - and it occurs to him now that he’s never seen this pattern before in his _life_.) “Er. All morning?”

Before he quite knows what’s happening, he finds himself sitting in a chair and holding a mug of hot cocoa. He hadn’t thought he was cold, but suddenly he’s warm all the way through. Maybe wandering through the snow for hours wasn’t such a great idea after all.

“He’s the bloke who found Josephus,” Crowley says. “Bernard, was it? And he was just about to explain whether your books are currently at the mercy of a marauding genie with more curiosity than common sense.”

“They’d best _not_ be,” the shop owner says, giving a distinct impression of ruffled feathers as he settles near Crowley on the couch.

Bernard sighs; he can’t get out of saying it now. “They’re perfectly safe. He… got homesick. We agreed he should have a chance to go home, but I wish--”

(_“Oh, this is getting far too much, I wish you would just go--”_)

“I wish I hadn’t.” He feels terribly selfish for saying so, and he doesn’t know why this hurts so bloody much, but it does and he can’t see the point in pretending otherwise.

“Exact wording bit you in the arse, then.” Crowley doesn’t sound unsympathetic, at least, for all her expression’s difficult to judge with her sunglasses firmly in place. “Sucks in the moment, but I shouldn’t worry about it too much, if I were you. He’ll turn up again.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“Functionally, genies are more like very, very minor demons than anything.” The shop owner looks at Crowley like he desperately wants to interrupt, but she pays him no mind and plows onward. “Only they’re not beholden to anyone but the person who lets them out of their locus first, which would be why they stopped handing out that kind of power - but anyway. Aside from having the staying power, he’s a bloody bad penny. He’ll come back even if he has to get here the long way.”

“Especially when there’s two of you he cares so deeply for to be found here,” the shop owner adds.

“You leave me out of this, angel.”

“You put yourself into it, my dear, so I don’t believe I shall.” The sheer familiarity between them is enough for Bernard to wonder if ‘angel’ is simply a term of endearment, or if the shop’s owner is behind the same curtain as Josephus and Crowley, the one Bernard accidentally pulled back earlier this week. He can’t help a moment of gratitude that these two are letting it stay pulled back, instead of pretending everything’s perfectly normal.

Still, he doesn’t want to push his luck by asking too many questions, nor overstay his welcome, so he turns his attention to his cocoa (it’s still warm, somehow) and lets Crowley and her friend settle into their friendly banter. Gradually, he feels more settled and less like everything’s coming undone at the seams for the second time in as many weeks. By the time he asks if there’s a phone he can borrow to call a cab, Crowley’s apparently thawed out some; the blanket’s slipped down around her shoulders, and she seems to have dozed off, if the slow ebb of chatter is any indication.

(There is a phone. Bernard’s both surprised it’s a rotary phone and, somehow, surprised it’s not an even older model than that.)

“Thank you,” he says, after hanging up. “I didn’t mean to intrude, but thank you for… all of this.”

“Oh, think nothing of it, young man. My door is always open to those who need it.”

“But God forbid a customer darkens your doorstep?”

A series of rather entertaining expressions crosses the shop owner’s face, settling on the same kind of ruffled dignity he’d shown when Crowley suggested Josephus was roaming the shop. “Yes, well, customers are an altogether different kettle of fish. Often, they merely _want_ to be here, or worse yet, feel entitled to it.”

“Fish, angel? Really?” Crowley sits up slowly on the couch, then bolt upright. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Josephus _still owes me that fucking lunch_, that utter--” She launches into a tirade in some long-dead language or other - or several, for all Bernard knows. He has no hope of following it at all, though if the mildly scandalised look on the shop owner’s face is anything to go by, he can at least guess at the gist of it.

She’s still going when Bernard’s cab arrives, and he leaves the shop laughing, which felt impossible just this morning. It still feels like there’s a hole in his heart, and he expects it will for a while yet, but the world’s still turning, and if Crowley thinks it’s likely Josephus will turn up again, he has no reason to disbelieve her.

_I wish you’d come back to me,_ he thinks as the cab pulls up outside his building. He doubts it’ll work, with Josephus decidedly out of earshot, but he figures it can’t hurt to try, either.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd feel worse about Crowley undoing about a third of what plot Bernard and the Genie has, if the show _itself_ didn't undo that same third of the plot. XD
> 
> Hat tip to That Tumblr Post About Aziraphale's Tartan coming along right when I wrote a thing with a character who'd know it's a unique pattern.
> 
> As for the middle bit, that was Jesus/Mary Magdalene as 'panromantic ace guy marries lesbian friend for her safety and because they're both childfree,' to put it in modern terms. That's primarily a GO headcanon I've been chewing on, but it works well in both of these fandoms.


End file.
